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Living on the Edge: People, Place & Possibility
Engage Art Studios, Group show.
Niland House Gallery, Merchants Road
Curated by Michelle Brown
November 6th - 21st
Opening reception: Saturday the 6th of November from 5pm til 7pm.
This year while on a residency called the Inishlacken project, I made a piece called ‘island which will be shown in the Niland House Gallery as part of Tulca. It will be shown as part of a group show by Engage Art Studios. Engage Art Studios is an artist-run studio space in Galway city centre that supports ambitious contemporary artists in a professional environment. Six members of the Studios will be showing work including Maeve Curtis, Cecilia Danell, Miriam Donohue, EimearJean McCormack, Maria Brennan and myself. Interestingly, the studios will be activating a ‘slack space’ or long unoccupied unit on Merchant’s Road. The space, called the Niland House Gallery, has been generously loaned to the artists from the Niland family and has been transformed into a contemporary gallery for Tulca. The artists' will host a reception on Saturday the 6th of November from 5pm til 7pm.
The Inishlacken project is an artists residency curated by Roundstone based artist Rosie Mc Gurran. Rosie is native of Belfast and a graduate of Fine Art at the University of Ulster. She is the recipient of many awards, most recently the Conor Prize for figurative work at the Royal Ulster Academy in Belfast of which she is also an Associate member.
Inspired by the artist Gerard Dillion who spent time on the island in the 1950s, she set up an artists residency on the depopulated island of Inishlacken. Artists from Ireland and abroad attend the residency including, Mick o Dea, Sioban Piercy, Margaret Irwin, Dolores Lynne, Caroline Wright, Aideen Barry, Dorothy Smith and Louise Manifold. This way, every summer, an out of the way location becomes a vibrant artists community. While on the island I swam, painted in egg tempera, had nice meals and shot my video piece ‘Island’ for this years Tulca.
‘Island’ is about a deserted island off the coast of Roundstone, Galway. It explores the themes of emigration and relocation to the mainland and the idea that an island is a separate alien place to the mainland, an in between space that is apart and quite different as its dislocated from the mainland. The piece addresses the island’s isolated beauty and the way that modern life has cast aside once useful objects, the way the houses are set among the sea weed and fleece for example. Sea weed was once extensively gathered to make gelatin and sheep fleeces once used for knitting, are now simply discarded after periodic shearing.
The houses are also lit from within on St Johns night and in the shots you can just about make out the bonfires lining the coast on the mainland. Echoes of sea shanties can also be heard. St Johns night is an old tradition where Bonfires are lit along the coast of Conemara. It dates back to pagan times where midsummers day was the time when fire and water acquired medicinal qualities.
The poem in the piece was written by Anna o Toole who emigrated to the states from Inishlacken in the early part of this century and it explores the sense of loss an islander has once they leave for the mainland. It is read out by her great grand daughter on her return to the island.
As one can see in Anna's poem, even when islanders move to the mainland, or emigrate, their homeland plays a major part in their consciousness. Even if the homeland exists only in memory the idea of return is critical for many dispersed communities and it extends beyond those who personally remember the home country as we can see with Lauren, Anna's great grand daughter who reads out Anna's poem in this piece. Even if they do return to the same place, that place may be profoundly changed (Oxfeld and Long 2004).
One can see this on Inishlacken. The island has been uninhabited for forty years but before that it was inhabited for thousands of years. For the first time the islanders have to deal with the idea of their original home becoming a ghost town. The rusty skeleton of the windmill once used to pump fresh water into the reservoir tank, a scattering of cottages all in ruins and grass grown boreens undermined by rabbit burrows are all that remain of a once thriving community.
Below: installation Shots of Tulca show
Above Jennifer Cunningham
Above Maria Brennan Miram O Donaghue
Above Maeve Curtis Ceilia Danell